As much a novelist as an art critic, he theorised the principles of literary and pictorial realism from the middle of the nineteenth century. Familiar with the nascent Impressionist circles, his writings fed the aesthetic debate that ran through France from the 1850s to the 1870s.
The story
Born in 1833, Louis Edmond Duranty left his post in the civil service in 1857 to write. The year before, he had founded a review whose title was a programme: “Réalisme”.
A friend of Zola and of Manet — with whom he fought a duel in 1870 before the two were reconciled — he published “La Nouvelle Peinture” in 1876, taking the part of the group of artists then exhibiting at the Durand-Ruel galleries.
He died poor in 1880. Degas had painted him the year before, seated in front of his books; Zola, his executor, wrote the catalogue for the sale of his library and his pictures, the proceeds going to his companion. He lies in Division 53.
On site, do not miss
A grave linked to the founding aesthetic debates of realism and Impressionism.
Visitors' questions
What part did Duranty play in the debate over realism?
From the 1850s and 1860s he set out the principles of literary and pictorial realism, in dialogue with the innovative painters and writers of his time, taking an active hand in the aesthetic debate of his day.
The writers and poetsDid Duranty mix with the Impressionists?
Yes. He moved in the circles of the emerging Impressionists, a closeness that fed his critical thinking on the new forms of artistic representation of his time.
Marcel ProustWhere is Louis Edmond Duranty's grave?
In Division 53 of Père-Lachaise, alongside Henry Becque and Alfred Assolant, in a sector rich in nineteenth-century writers and critics.
The grave of Henry BecqueDo other art critics rest at Père-Lachaise?
The cemetery holds several figures of nineteenth-century art criticism and theory, alongside the painters and sculptors they so often wrote about or championed.
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